Studio711.com – Ben Martens

You Don’t Need More Bandwidth

Here’s a tip: the next time you’re on the phone with your internet provider and they say “For $10/month, I can offer you X bandwidth”, just say no. You almost certainly don’t need it. Another common way they start this conversation is by asking what you do with your connection or how many devices you have connected. No matter what you say, they’re going to explain why you don’t have enough bandwidth.

I have over 30 devices connected to my network, work from home, do frequent video calls and screen sharing, stream multiple TV shows at the same time, and play online video games, but I’ve lived for a couple of weeks with 10Mbps down and 10Mbps up and it didn’t impact life at all. (My service was busted and it took them a long time to figure out why.) But of course, as soon as I was back to the 240Mbps down, 10Mbps up service that I was paying for, the sales guy insinuated I was dumb for not paying $10/month more to get 400/10 service. They’ve overselling you. Basically the only time you’ll notice that extra speed is if you’re trying to download enormous files like new video games or operating system ISOs. I’d only pay for more than the base package if a slight increase in price would get me higher upload speeds. That’s rarely an option though.

So go for whatever the cheapest package is and I bet that the only difference you’ll notice is that you have a little more money in your account each month. And even if you decide I’m wrong and you need more speed, they’re always going to be happy to bump you up to a higher package with no change fees.